


The soft hours of our married years

by lbmisscharlie



Series: White Writing [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bathtub Sex, Bathtubs, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 01:36:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10629441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: “You take very good care of me,” Peggy says, a little breathlessly, and Angie laughs, kisses the crease of her shoulder where one arm is flung over the edge of the tub.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, look, one last little story in this 'verse! Title, as usual, comes from Carol Ann Duffy's "White Writing."

Peggy doesn’t gripe. She’ll complain to Angie about work, will curse the ass-headed men in the streets who think calling a lady _sugar_ as she goes about her day is a great compliment, will huff and groan about little annoyances when she knows Angie’s in a good mood and will humor her, but she doesn’t gripe about the serious things, the pains she feels alongside her own guilt.

Her leg must hurt, immobile and stiff inside its grimy plaster cast, and the spectacle of bruises on her ribcage lingers on, a jaundiced chartreuse. “Yellow’s never been my color,” Peggy says wryly as Angie examines the bruise, lifting Peggy’s arm up and watching for a wince. 

Peggy’s too damned good at keeping her face composed. 

“Yes, the purple suited you much better,” Angie returns, guiding the sleeve of Peggy’s blouse down her arm. Peggy accepts her help without complaint, now, after the shouting match they’d had two weeks into her recovery. Angie doesn’t regret the words she said, not if they’ve led to Peggy slowing down.

With one hand, Peggy grips the edge of the sink for balance; she’s all off-kilter these days, too few working limbs and too much time to think about all the ways they aren’t working, Angie suspects. Peggy’s a creature of instinct: act first, use the resources available, trust the body. Each step, now, she must plan through in advance, complicated battle movements just to progress from one room to another on her own.

The blouse slips limply from Peggy’s shoulders, and Angie drops it to the tile. She wears nothing underneath, long hours on the sofa not quite necessitating more than a decrepit gabardine blouse, faded blue and worn around the collar, and an oversized woolen cardigan with enormous wooden toggle buttons. They’ve had to be a bit creative on her bottom half; Angie’s bought a large pair of men’s pajamas and slit them up the side of the leg to fit over her cast. 

Now she helps Peggy out of them, slipping down over her thighs and kneeling to work them off her calf. Peggy leans on her to lift her bare foot, kicking them away; her body is warm through Angie’s clothes. 

When they bought the house, the long, deep bathtub had them both in near gleeful joy, and they’ve taken sincere and frequent advantage of it. But now, as Peggy sits on the edge, leaning on Angie in order to slip her leg into the tub and slide her body down slowly while keeping her cast out of the shallow water, its size is unwieldy. Angie cups one hand around the hard cast surrounding her ankle, a misshapen mockery of a human joint in dingy plaster, helping hold the weight up. 

Peggy makes a tiny, wrinkled grimace as her hips settle, just enough to show how the sharp bend required to hold her leg up smarts, but her expression clears as she leans back and lets her head fall into the water.

Her eyes flutter closed and for a long moment Angie is caught, transfixed by the soft parting of Peggy’s mouth, by the way her hair tangles in the low eddies of the water, fluttering and floating like the way Angie used to play mermaid on bath day, back when she was still a slip of a thing and the ocean seemed to offer the most vast, unexplored adventure she could imagine. 

Underneath the water, Peggy’s skin pinks; she likes it steaming hot, and to linger until her fingertips are wizened crones and the water is dingy and lukewarm. Angie guesses she’s not the only one to want, deeply, all those things the prime of her years did not afford her, for though she absolutely knows Peggy would not change much about her years during the war, the move to America and the end of rationing was a shocking welcome. Angie, too, remembers too many years of her Ma stretching the meat to share among the working men of the family – Dad and four brothers – and holding back something sweet for Angie to make up for it. And though food wasn’t scarce at the Griffith, the rent was dear and hard-won.

In fact, she considers it a distinct victory that she no longer has to tie on an apron and fake a smile, cheek muscles aching to yawn instead; a home of her own and her name up in lights is much more than she thought she was allowed to dream for. A home of her own, and a love far deeper than she could have dreamed. 

Peggy surfaces, hair streaming back from her forehead, and levers a deep sigh. “I want you to scrub every inch of me,” she says, sounding more defiant than suggestive. Nonetheless, Angie can’t help the soft thrum of interest that catches her body at the sight of Peggy, nude. The bed upstairs is lonely.

Still, she tugs down a washcloth, wetting it in the water over Peggy’s belly, which laps against her breasts, pink nipples just breaking the surface. She rubs the soap to a lather and starts with Peggy’s arm, the one draped over the side of the bath in front of Angie. 

Leaving her body limp, Peggy watches her through half-closed eyes as Angie rubs the washcloth in circles over her skin: the back of her hand, delicate over the small bruise that marks the IV injection site from her hospital stay, her knuckles, the gaps between her fingers. Up her arm, into the soft crevasse of her bent elbow. Peggy leans into her touch.

Angie rinses the washcloth before shifting Peggy forward to start on her back. She lifts the heavy fall of Peggy’s hair, twisting it into a rope and bringing it around over one shoulder. It is fashionable for women their age to wear it bobbed, set once a week at the hairdresser’s, but Peggy’s falls down past her shoulders. Still dark, with a scattershot of silver.

She rubs across the broad sweep of her back, its constellations familiar: the little dotted birthmark on the back of her shoulder, the jagged scar from a knife wound in ’54 across the side of her ribcage, the mole between the wings of her shoulder blades. 

Peggy stays quiet, eyes closed and body malleable, as Angie reaches over her to clean her other arm. Then her foot, a little scrub to the tender insole so that Peggy flinches, makes a face, and between her toes and up her calf. She rinses the washcloth.

Underneath the dirtying water, Peggy’s body seems to ripple, its softness emphasized by the gentle lapping of the water. Angie washes her belly, its gentle, round sag, and up her ribcage to the undersides of her breasts.

“Oh, go on,” Peggy murmurs, amused, when Angie lingers a bit at the space between her breasts. She’s always liked that bit, the soft gentle dip, fleshy over the hard plate of her sternum. 

“You’re a damned romantic,” Angie says, grinning when Peggy gives her that pleased-cat smile, and runs her hand over the swell of her breast, over her nipple, soft in the heat of the water. She gives it a little pinch, knowing the way Peggy’s mouth will gasp open before she catches herself. 

“How is your leg? Are your hips sore?” Angie says. Peggy hums, not discontently.

“Could use a little more loosening up,” she says, glancing up at Angie and waggling her eyebrows. Angie tries not to reward her with a laugh, fails. Peggy’s grin grows wider, and she wiggles under Angie’s hand, still cupping the rise of her breast. Angie gives it a little smack, splash of water muffling the impact, and Peggy lets her teeth show, delighted. 

“I don’t know,” Angie says. “Wouldn’t want to strain you.” Peggy tilts her head back, flicks her lashes, almost parodic but for the way she bares her pulse point, the way she pushes her breast up into Angie’s hand. It’s hardly cajoling when Angie so wants to touch her, but she lets Peggy pout a little, lets her hand move tortuously slowly. 

“It’s therapeutic,” Peggy says, self-assured, and Angie laughs and dips one hand down her belly, skimming it over her skin in the still-hot water. The curls between her legs are springy, made soft by soap, and Peggy spreads herself open a little wider. Angie’s careful of her elbow, which tucks against the inside of Peggy’s propped-up knee, keeping her cast in its place on the edge of the tub, but brings her hand to cup around Peggy’s cunt. 

She’s hot, and slick deep in her folds. Angie uses two fingers to spread her open, watching the way Peggy’s mouth falls open at the heat of the water rushing against her flesh, then pets at her with her middle finger, dragging up the center of her cunt and flicking it over her clit. 

“You’re –” Peggy says, and Angie says, “Hmm?” drawing a circle around the hard bud of Peggy’s clit, watching her throat bob as she swallows. Sliding them up, she draws the hood back, and Peggy’s hips jerk at the sudden touch of hot water. “You take very good care of me,” Peggy says, a little breathlessly, and Angie laughs, kisses the crease of her shoulder where one arm is flung over the edge of the tub. 

“That’s why you keep me,” Angie says, fondly, and starts to stroke Peggy’s clit in earnest, the broad circles she favors. With her other hand, she pets at the curve of Peggy’s neck, fingertips grazing over the point of her pulse. It’s all awkward angles, Peggy’s hips canted sideways to accommodate the heft of the cast, Angie’s arm plunged under the water and her breasts pressed uncomfortably against the edge of the tub. It doesn’t matter much, not when Peggy’s chapped, bare mouth drops open in a soft whimper, when under Angie’s hand her flesh is hot and tender.

“Yes –” Peggy says, and then – “Darling –” and clutches at her own breast, thumbing hard over the nipple. Her hips jerk up under the water, sending a splash over the edge; Angie leans into her, soaked up to her elbow and across her chest, and rubs at her clit with the pads of three fingers until Peggy’s hip go stiff and her teeth clench. 

As she falls back into the tub with a gasping exhale, her cast thuds awkwardly against Angie’s elbow. She jerks her arm out of the water to keep it from falling in, and the whole thing sends a wave up to splash across her front. She huffs; Peggy keeps her eyes closed, but her mouth tips up in amused contentment. She drops her head to the back of the tub and sinks a little lower, water covering her belly and breasts to lap at the rise of her collarbone. Angie rubs her thumb at Peggy’s temple, fondly.

“I should wash your hair,” she says; Peggy hums, eyes closed. Letting her fingers trail in the water, Angie flits them through Peggy’s hair, feeling it buffer softly against her fingertips. The shampoo is on the rack up above them; instead of getting up she folds one arm on the edge of the tub, across her chest, and leaves the other to dip in the slow-eddying water, just brushing against Peggy’s shoulder. Peggy smiles a little, turns her head to nudge her mouth against the backs of Angie’s knuckles. Her eyelids are traced with pale veins, the corners of her eyes creased. 

Angie’s arms are sore, and the front of her blouse is soaking, but the water is still warm, so they linger.


End file.
